DECAMA-project: Analysis of farm income from South American camelids meat production in Latin American countries: Preliminary results of a comparison between case studies

The scarce wealth of the Andean rural areas imposes the necessity to support the economic development, improve the income of the population, the hygien status and the quality of the products of animal origin. The main interventions in agricultural policy consist in the provision of professional skills and farm economic training services and infrastructures for the supply of the products on the market. The purpose of this paper consists in illustrating the preliminary results of a comparative analysis on the formation of the income and the calculation of the production cost of camelids meat representative of the more diffused Andean realities in Peru and Bolivia. The data are technical and economical and they refer to the year 2003. The source of the data is represented by some farm groups, homogeneous from the point of view of the productive system and the endowment of the production factors. The collection of the data has been carried out by technicians, with the use of an homogeneous questionnaire for the different countries, through business visits and direct interviews with the agricultural entrepreneurs. The results analysis consist in the elaboration of balance sheet (calculation of the income and the unitary production cost of alpaca and llama meat) in three Peruvian farm groups and five Bolivian ones.